(2) Political Organization and Power

(2) Political Organization and Power

a. Overcoming Threats and Political Organizations

 

What can people do in a survival process that is essentially a war to gain some means? Among the various possible means, it is very important to form a social organization which is a tool for people to help each other by bonding together. In other words,

 

         [Ch.2.4] Mankind creates a political organization and participates in it for the expansion of their own survival and profit.

 

As Hobbes suggested, the greatest power among human strengths comes from the unification and joint decision-making of many people. The more people come together and combine their strengths, the more they can overcome greater survival threats that they cannot solve alone. This is evident in an empirical sense. Even the strongest individual would find it difficult to fight and win against a lion, but it would be possible if they hunted as a group. Therefore, organizations are the result of human cooperation, and when people cooperate, they immediately create and unify the organization.

 

Many scholars assume that organizations or groups and indivi- duals are fundamentally opposed. Locke placed the right of civil disobedience as a very important principle in his political philosophy. The authoritative researcher on organizations, Etzioni, thought that "the needs of the organization and the needs of the individual are usually incompatible or conflicting." However, because the worst monarch was worse than the shortest state of anarchism, the people of medieval Europe forgave the king, just as the organization was established to promote the interests of the individual. Therefore, to determine what is appropriate, one must pursue a proper balance between the interests of the individual and the organization, rather than adopting a position that absolutely idolizes the organization like Hobbes, or thinking that the interests of the organization and the individual are fundamentally conflicting, as Etzioni does, is practically incorrect.

 

In terms of the purpose of organizational formation[Ch.2.4], the conclusion follows that the organization must be bigger. As seen in the history of the Sogdians, groups or nations created by relatively few people bonding together tend to experience political turmoil. The country of the Sogdians, who were part of the Iranian tradition, was located in Sogdiana but had a small land area and was unable to defend itself from external invasions. Because the country was small, it was weak and eventually conquered by Alexander the Great, later being invaded and destroyed by the Selucid Empire, the Sassanian Persian Empire, the Kushan Empire, the Tulunids, the Arab military, and the Mongol Empire of Genghis Khan. The history of the Republic of Korea also has a history of crisis as a result of being invaded by the Manchu, Mongol, and Han tribes who ruled China during the Goryeo and Joseon periods. The basic cause of this crisis was that we were a small country and the ethnic groups who ruled China had a large political organization (nation).

 

On the contrary, there is also a reason why the organization should not be too big. When individuals form and participate in the organization, they need to consider not only the benefits(H) they get, but also the costs(C) that come with it. In order to bond, individuals need to sacrifice some of their short-term and micro-level benefits and commit themselves for the common good, which is the cost. The common good will eventually return to individual benefit, but it is less certain than the individual's immediate pursuit of their own benefits. And the larger the organization is, the greater the uncertainty becomes.

 

Thus, collective benefits through the organization are necessary for individuals, but because the personal benefits they can receive are uncertain, individuals always compare the two. That is, they compare the amount of political cost(C) they pay and the amount of benefit(H) they can receive from the public benefit obtained later, and make a choice^[Ch.1.5].

 

So, what exactly can we define an organization as?

 

         [Ch.2.5] The organization is a persistent cooperative (cohesion) relationship, and it is a group of people(K) who are regulated by a rule system(R).

 

Although expressed somewhat difficultly, the meaning of the (political) organization referred to here is as we normally understand it. If we try to express this in a diagram, it would be as shown in [Diag.2.A.3].

 

[Diag.2.A.3] Core structure of an organization: People who interact according to rules

 

 

Cooperation and Rules

 

The term "cooperation" is virtually the same as "organization". All organizations are formed by the cooperation of people, and if people cooperate, they form an organization and make cohesion. On the other hand, continuous cooperation can be called "bonding". Therefore, let's understand the precise concept definition of an organization starting from the meaning of cooperation and cohesion.

 

Let's look at the case where Peter and Kevin cooperate with each other. The meaning of this cooperation is that Peter provides some of what Kevin wants and Kevin also provides some of what Peter wants. When Peter needs someone to fight with, fighting together is cooperation, and when Kevin needs food, Peter provides some of that food.

Rules are necessary for cooperation and cohesion. In order to cooperate, people need to know what the others want and how to react to it. The repetition of the process of reacting to signals that represent the parties involved in cooperation and cohesion leads to the formation of rules. Therefore, cooperation involves making and obeying rules, and conversely, making and obeying rules is cooperation and cohesion. When many people cooperate over time to achieve cohesion, the rules become more complex and systematic. This forms the "rule system (R)."

 

Rules are signals (or communication) that instruct each individual's behavior and the collection of these rules is a rule system. From a political perspective, the actual rule system of an organization is the political system. People can know what to do and when if they understand the rules. The rules are everything that informs this. In other words, rules are a systematic device for issuing instructions (commands) that allow more people to cooperate. Here, rules include not only the rules of the written law. but also customary law and personal agreements as well as informal rules. If the Peter instructs the behavior and Kevin follows, this is the simplest and most short-term rule. If the Peter reads the legal document and acts, the legal document operates as a signal that instructs behavior and the behavior of the first person who reads and understands it includes communication.

 

Rules exist for the sake of cooperation and cohesion, so if we define cooperation as "rules," it would be as follows:

 

         [Ch.2.6] Cooperation (Cohesion) is obedience to shared rules (R).

 

Therefore, realizing cooperation and cohesion is the rule system (R). In the concept of rules, two elements follow. One is the distribution of benefits, and the other is compromise. Cooperation and cohesion pursue survival and expansion of benefits outside the organization, but inside the organization they pursue the distribution of benefits. Meanwhile, the distribution of benefits is represented by the process of compromise, just as the lease agreement (R) is concluded between landlords and tenants in order to distribute benefits. Just as the international relations (R) such as the Westphalian system could only be maintained when the dominant power's position and benefits were guaranteed on the power balance of European countries, the distribution of benefits cannot exist without cooperation if the understanding relationship between regional residents and congressional candidates does not match. Furthermore, just as the opposition between the congress, who wanted a constitution based on presidential power, and the young people, who wanted the establishment of a constitutional democracy, during the attempt to amend the constitution in the early 1990s, if benefits are not compromised, the rules (in this case, the constitution) will not be established.

 

 

Political Characteristics of Rules

 

The following three features are inevitably present in rules: temporal persistence, Enforceability, and flexibility.

 

          [Ch.2.6a] (Persistence) All rule systems are sustained over time.

          [Ch.2.6b] (Coercibility) All rules enforce compliance through constraint.

          [Ch.2.6c] (Flexibility) Rules accommodate a certain degree of behavioral and choice diversity.

 

First, all rules persist temporally. The origin of this persistence lies in the essence of the rule system itself. That is, all rules can only persist while people cooperate. If the rules were to suddenly appear and disappear, like a rule made an hour ago changing an hour later, then it would not be possible to cooperate with each other based on those rules.

Second, all rules have coercibility that prevents rule violations. Coercibility also arises from the essence of the rules. It is often accomplished through the use of the rule system known as law, with the power of the authorities, which can appear negatively, but there is a more positive aspect. This is because the coercibility of the rules is also a form of repression against criminal activities. Without such repression, the rule system would collapse, so such repression activities are necessary for all rule systems.

 

Thirdly, the rules have flexibility that encompasses a certain level of behavior and range of choices. This is because the provisions of the rules must be general. The legal provision "a person who speeds must pay a fine" can be a law, but the legal provision "Jack must pay 30,000 won" cannot be. This is because there is no generality that applies to everyone and only refers to specific cases. In this way, the rule system encompasses a certain level of behavior and range of choices. Therefore, it can be flexibly applied to some degree of various behavioral changes. Whether Jack is considered to have been speeding or not, he may or may not be fined, and similarly, the constitutional provision "The Republic of Korea is a democratic country" can be interpreted as liberal democracy or social democracy in itself. For the same reason, most tax systems of the state are prepared to accommodate some degree of diverse demands, whether to reinforce welfare (favorable to the poor) or to promote economic growth (favorable to the rich). In this way, the rule system is prepared to accommodate some degree of distribution of benefits.

 

 

Mathematical Description of Organization

 

The contents of [Ch.2.5] can be described mathematically as follows;

       [Fmla.2.1]        \( g \equiv <K, R> \)

This formula states that the relationship of people (\( K \) ) with a system of rules ( \( R \)  ) is organization ( \( g \)  ). When looking at this formula, you can identify only two points of a set of 'people' and the 'system of rules' for your understanding of (political) organization.

 

If two people, a and b, are in a collaborative organization, then the set of people, , is {a, b}. On the other hand, in a general political organization such as a government, political party, or nation, many people are included in the set . Similarly, if two people simply collaborate, the rule system  may be composed of just a few simple agreements, but in a large organization at the national level, it will be composed of a complex legal system.

Among all social organizations, the most important things for humans are family and the nation. This is because they are the social organizations that play the most important role in human survival. The family is characterized by a strong biological continuation of the individual, and the nation is an organization formed to overcome comprehensive survival threats centered on the most urgent threat of violence to the individual's survival. Regardless of whether it is a nation, a city, or any other social organization, any social organization formed to overcome the most urgent and prioritized threat of violence to human survival can be considered a political organization.

Regardless of the organization, if many people come together and pool their power, it is clear that they will obtain benefits, but it is also clear that they must pay a cost for this[Ch.1.4]. The cost here refers to the cost of maintaining the organization. For example, in the medieval city where merchants voluntarily established an independent political body in a tyranny-filled political wasteland, citizens who were not nobles were able to guarantee a certain level of safety and freedom, but they had to endure many controls. This is exactly what the taxes and various obligations that all citizens of a country pay today are like.